@Cody...read this: Prior to my retirement 20 years ago, I had spent 36 years in the Aerospace business, working as a Lab Test Engineer, developing and testing Navigational, Communicatons, and Weapons Control systems for McDonnell-Douglas and Boeing. This work required that I maintain a Secret Clearance and a First Class FCC Radiotelephone License. I've been an Amateur Astronomer for the past 55 years and I recently purchased my 31st Telescope since leaving Military Service in 1962. The photo shows my home Electronics Lab where I had been engaged in calibrating the Tracking Rate of my 8" Celestron Schmidt-Cassegrain Telescope. Another picture shows a self-designed and built 300,000-volt Electrostatic Generator,or "Lightning Machine". Another picture shows me with a 17.5" Newtonian Reflecting Telescope on a Dobsonian base. The last picture shows the internal components of the "Little Boy" fission bomb that destroyed Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. I can tell you the function of every component in that weapon because I've studied the physics of Nuclear Weapons. So you see, I'm not a technological dummy...it's just that I think Cellular telephones for the general public are silly and unnecessary. Hal
@Hal Pollner Nice woodwork on the Wimshurst Machine. I believe some such static machines were called "Helmholtz", you may be able to add to that, or correct me. As a teen trying to blow myself up, my laboratory supplyhouse listed static machines for school lab use, for sale. Some outfit was making them somewhere. Frank PS: I agree, cellphones suck.
@Frank Sanoica, you're close, but that's not a Wimshurst Machine! It's a Bonetti Machine, which is a Wimshurst without the metallic sectors and brushes on the discs which pick up the electrostatic charges and send them to the Capacitors. The Bonetti has bare discs and non-contacting brushes which pick up the charges. The Wimshurst is self-priming through the action of the metallic sectors and brushes, while the Bonetti needs to be "primed" with a small electrostatic source before it can generate full-strength charges. The small Van de Graaff generator provides the priming for my Bonetti machine. I have a small commercially-built Wimshurst (shown) which generates a modest 75,000 volts. I built the large Van de Graaff which generated lightning bolts of 6 feet and over one million volts. It is now a garden ornament! The Helmholtz Machine is not an electrostatic generator. I appreciate your showing a technical interest in my scientific hobbies! Hal
@Hal Pollner Daggone it! I'd a really had an interest in those wonderful machines pictured, until I saw the 3rd. love of my life in the background......ya play much? Looks like a 44 X 88 regulation size, individual pocket pouches, no ball return? How far off straight ahead can you "throw" a ball, with 2 locked together? I got to where I went maybe 2 degrees off straight, with great effort. When taught pool, (by a Canuck Snooker expert), I did not believe locked balls could separate at an angle. He proved otherwise. Snooker pocket sides are not straight, like a billiards pocket, but are curved, thus if the ball approaching the pocket touches a side, it will not go in! In Snooker, the shot must be right on! Frank
@Hal Pollner, while it's obvious what you need a telescope for I wondered why you have and built the other machines in your lab? Is there another function than ornamental?
@Thomas Stearn To me, it's obvious: he has the same innate "need to know" as I, that need having driven me very close to the brink several times during my lifetime. Example: Did you know that a standard U.S. Army hand grenade, bought empty and deactivated with a hole drilled through it's bottom (pluggable by a standard threaded plug) can be stuffed with 1/2 stick of standard ditching dynamite? Or that a standard one quart Ball Mason Jar holds 6 sticks of dynamite, easily compacted within? Or, that toy model CO2 propellant cartridges like this one are absolutely perfect to use as small pyrotechnic large report devices? See, we.. or rathr perhaps I, just HAD to know. More in @Hal Pollner 's realm, I had to know how dangerous the high voltage transformers I was building might be. Hal's machines are essentially harmless; mine were potentially lethal. I proved that with a living animal, not wanting to kill, but rather to know if I might be killed. I learned, YES. After that, rather than turning to, say, tiddlywinks, I became much more cautious and meticulous. Frank
@Frank Sanoica, for your information, I had a 500 sq. ft. room addition built 19 years ago, just so I could have a Billiard Parlor. The table is a 9 x 4-1/2 foot Tournament-Size, with net pockets. It has 3 heavy slate beds and weighs about 900 pounds. I haven't had a game in about 6 years, and the only person I can beat is my Wife. I could never make a Combination or a Bank shot, and the only way I can sink a ball is if it's lined up perfectly with the pocket and not too far away! I used to go to the Billiard Room in our Senior Citizens Club, and found that everyone I played could beat me! The real reason I had to have a Billiard Parlor and a Big Table was just for my Ego... I just wanted to HAVE it! Here's a shot of my Billiard Parlor, which is now taken up by the construction of benchwork for 125 feet of Model Railroad Track! Hal
@Thomas Stearn Well, scientists were responsible for making the first atomic bomb work. Then they attempted to rescind their efforts, futile then, as the mysterious imp had been released from his bottle, to forever wreak havoc. Just after they witnessed the first explosion, a test in the New Mexico desert, one remarked to that extent. I would have hated myself had I entered into such work. Frank
Well, actually, I didn't have those in mind, Frank. There are other scientists as well, aren't there? Your point is understandable, though.
@Thomas Stearn I know you didn't, but used the extreme example. Good can be said, of course, regarding the later results of atomic studies. Medical treatment, therapeutics, nuclear power and propulsion, and the like....... and then there was Therac 25: "In a period where computers have become part of everyday living, the technology has been increasing at an alarming rate. And with this rate of innovation, human mistakes are bound to occur. Between the period of 1985-1987, such an error did occur, costing six innocent people their lives. Six people too many. This mistake was known as Therac-25; the name of the machine used in radiation therapy for cancer patients. It is the biggest and most disastrous case of human error relating computer controlled radiation and human death to date." See: http://www.bowdoin.edu/~allen/courses/cs260/readings/therac.pdf
Yes, Frank...when it was proven in the laboratory at Los Alamos that fission could be initiated when a U-235 nucleus was split, Enrico Fermi remarked: "The world is headed for grief!" I have several movies, both Documentary and Hollywood, as well as some declassified books about the Manhattan Project and its results. I also have a book on the detailed assembly, with detailed photos of both Fat Man and Little Boy, which have become declassified. This was a terrific Military/Scientific gamble, which paid off. Hal
@Hal Pollner Story has it that after they hoisted the "gadget" to the top of the 100-foot high steel tower the day before, during the night before the test, lightning struck the tower during rain.......whether true or not, it goes to prove they knew what they were doing in designing the bomb casing...... Frank
@Thomas Stearn Re: The Therac 25 story: Therac had 2 output levels, one for minimum penetration of the body, the other 25 million electron volt X-rays for deep penetration. In one article it told of a patient who had been strapped in place on the machine for a routine minimum-exposure treatment. The operator was unaware of any malfunction until the unfortunate victim broke loose from the constraints and began screaming while beating on the operator's enclosure door that they were burning him to death. An intercom system which allowed the patient and operator to converse had stopped working some days before. Treatments went ahead without the intercom. When I read of this, I was shocked and horrified, having worked during my lifetime with some very dangerous high-voltage and X-ray equipment, always imagining in the back of my mind, what if......... Frank
Certainly! The bomb was securely clamped to its surrounding steel structure, which was itself a huge grounding rod. Any lightning bolt that hit the tower would pass harmlessly around the "gadget" shell and continue on down the steel tower to the ground. (Actually, lightning strikes from the ground UP!) The cloud sends an exploratory "feeler" strike to the grounded object, providing an ionized path for the return surge of electrons to the cloud which follows, which is the real lightning strike. The Earth is a vast repository of Electrons, which is Negative electricity. The electrons flow from the Ground to the Cloud, which is deficient in electrons, or Positive. The lightning strike is nature's way to equalize the charge differential between Earth and Clouds. Electric current always flows from Negative to Positive! Hal